


i will be back, one day

by alpacas



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, but contains spoilers up thru e49, set during e26: "found & lost"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-09
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-24 17:57:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17708987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpacas/pseuds/alpacas
Summary: You said what you were before you died doesn't matter.





	i will be back, one day

**Author's Note:**

> molly and nott had this mutual disdain for one another that was always interesting, but with the revelations that nott has died before, too, is just so much more fascinating to me. so i wrote this at 1am!

They need to keep moving, but no one wants to leave the grave. It's not that anyone's forgotten Jester and Fjord and Yasha need them, just that no one wants to say _let's leave Molly_. Nott gets it. So she's decided she'll be the one to say it: time to go! Time's-a-wasting! Throw in a joke, maybe. Maybe not. But Beau is staring listless at the falling snow, Keg is chewing her cigarette, and Caleb is rubbing his arms, more repetitive than a shiver.

 _Let's go!_ she thinks, and then looks guilty at the grave.

Goes to Caleb instead, pressing herself into his side and his coat and the smell of him. The shrinking part of her knows he smells dirty and musty. Most of her likes it, likes the smell of sweat and earth and mud and fear. It means he is not a threat. It means he is sick. Goblins like these things.

"Oh, little one," he murmurs, his hand rising up to pat her as though she were Frumpkin.

"Are you alright?" she asks, thinking: now, any second now, I will say _we need to go_. Until then, she lets him pet her. "You've been very quiet. It was very nice of you to make such a good grave."

He takes his hand from her head to his jaw, running his fingers over his mouth. "It was decency, not kindness."

"Decency is keeping things…" she hesitates. The word she had thought of was _goblins_ , as in, keeping things like goblins from eating the corpse, everyone knows they'll do that, raid the fields for meat, if a cow dies burn or butcher it well, a corpse will only tempt them — No. Nott doesn't know about things like that.

No, she decides, changing her mind: some things bear mentioning. "…keeping nasty creatures from a body. Kindness is giving Molly a pretty grave."

"It was very sudden," Caleb murmurs, half in his own head. She knows, she listens and she watches and she can tell. He hadn't noticed her debate. Good. He doesn't need that sort of distraction. "It still feels unreal."

"I thought we had a good plan," she admits, looking down at her wrong scabby hands. _And so we need to go_ , she thinks. Doesn't say. "Until it all went wrong and -" she makes a sound. _Splat._

"Nott —" Caleb breaks off. Changes or rephrases his unasked question. "Have you… you know that Mollymauk is _dead_ , correct?"

"Of course I do," she says, her voice much more terse than she'd wanted, she tries her best to never get impatient, certainly not with her Caleb, but her voice is tight like her wire, wrapped around her right pinky. "I'm not a child. I know lots of dead people."

He rubs his forehead. She delicately scoots herself away from him. A few feet away, Beau has taken to pacing back and forth before Molly's grave, turning to glance at it every few moments — _yep. Still there._ Keg is rolling cigarettes, her expression stormy.

"Have you lost anyone?" Caleb asks her at last, his expression pained, probing.

Just me, she thinks. Looks away. At her long clawed feet on the frozen dirt. Boots don't fit her, but it's fine. Her feet are tough, hard and scaly, and she doesn't feel the cold.

She never ends up answering, and he never ends up pushing her. He places his large human hand on hers. "You have not said farewell to Mollymauk yet, have you? Perhaps it will… help. You seem tense."

She hugs her knees. "Fine," Nott says after a long while watching Beau pace in the falling snow.

She creeps forward. Doesn't look back. She's thinking about dancing with Molly a few nights ago. How he was much too tall and led her like she was a small child, but how it had been the first time she'd danced with anyone in a long time. Felderwin had been full of harvest festivals and seasonal dances. She'd always —

"Can I have a minute?" Nott asks Beau, who nods, breaks off her pacing, goes to check and recheck their remaining supplies. Shuffle stolen cards. Nott doesn't know, exactly, but she twitches her ears around her to make sure Beau is gone and Caleb is still at the cart: she's sure he's watching her, but he doesn't have to _know_.

She sits in front of the grave with her knees drawn up and chin tucked into her scarf. Molly must be just below her. Bloodied, but not… not like the dead body in the basement. Still mostly Molly. She hadn't said anything at the funeral. She still doesn't know what to say. She remembers fighting alongside him, but she remembers fighting _with_ him, too.

You said I was patronizing and stupid, she thinks towards his coat. But she doesn't feel satisfied about it, about being alive while he isn't. You said what you were before you died doesn't matter.

Joke's on you though. Before you died you were Molly, and everyone's really sad about him right now. No one cares about some nameless body.

Is she supposed to say these things aloud? Nott can feel it, feel words, heavy on her tongue and filling her mouth, words she'd never had said to Molly while living, even when he had told her that the person you are before you die is stupid, is pathetic, is a loser for having gone, and that he in his new life is happy. Happy!

Comes easy to some, she supposes.

"I have a grave too," she murmurs, into her folded arms, into the cloth of her coat. Her heart immediately starts to race. She's never told anyone that before. "I don't know for sure. But probably."

By her guess, they had been two days south of the town, when — and by the time she had woken up — the camp had been moved further into the woods and away from the men that must have searched for her, sought a sign, when only two people had emerged from the river, when she hadn't come after or later —

It doesn't matter, she tries to tell herself. What you are now matters, and those feelings are from a different person. You're not that person. You are not.

"I'm sorry I never told you," she mutters, barely audible even to herself. "Maybe you wouldn't have cared, though." It's pretty stupid to make someone else's funeral about her. About some goblin girl. She wishes she was sadder, could cry about it, could be properly miserable and guilty. Wishes she had told Molly _I don't buy your second life thing, because I've had one too and it_ sucks. And then maybe they would have been kind of friends, he'd stop trying to fight with her and Caleb because they would have had this bond, this shared thing, and they could have talked instead of danced. Remember how scary it is, to wake up and know you shouldn't? Remember how scary it is when you can't remember how old your brothers are or what your name was as a kid? They could have been friends, and Nott could have watched his back more, and she wouldn't have to explain to Beau that no, she isn't planning on picking his pockets, because maybe Molly wouldn't be dead.

"Your grave is very nice," Nott says, sniffling just once, hugely. "But now we have to go. I'm definitely about to use my authority as seventh in command to tell everyone so. You were also very bossy, so maybe you'll understand."

The sleeve of the coat moves very faintly in the faint breeze. Good enough for a sign, she decides. "I'm sorry we weren't friends," she says before climbing to her feet, dry-eyed: now. Okay. She has other friends to rescue.


End file.
